Friday, December 07, 2007

The hammer fell at Sotheby's New York and the tiny Guennol Lioness (see
my previous entry) sold for a whopping 57.2 million USD, the highest
price ever paid for a sculpture in recorded history. Given her
diminutive size, that's about 16.3 million an inch, and worth every
nickel. The buyer's name is not yet disclosed, but I'm looking forward
to finding out the identity of that modern-day Sardanapalus.

On to something less staggering, but just as breathtaking in its way.

Sir William Russell Flint seems to have spent his working life
surrounded by beautiful women in pronounced states of undress. Even if
watercolor was a less recent medium than it is, Flint would still be
considered one of its greatest exponents today. His pictures shimmer,
and no effect seems beyond his powers. I love the man. Here's just one
reason out of hundreds why:

During
the Italian Renaissance that this picture evokes with such cool
deliberation, no artist would have thought of doing a portrait of his
model. Models impersonated goddesses, the Virgin Mary or allegories, and
the portrait, especially in profile, was reserved for ladies of social
position who would never have dreamed of revealing so much flesh, nor
probably could have possessed it to such a luscious degree. Flint did
his best work after World War II, and this picture captures all the
chic, slightly reticent elegance of Fifties England.

Flint seldom ever painted portraits, or men for that matter; he seems to
have been an artistic pasha, serenely enjoying and depicting the lush
carnality that filled his studio. Watercolor perfectly captures the
evanescent, floating-world quality of the subject shown here -- the
provoking contrast of flawless skin barely yet sumptuously clad,
luminous blues and ivories, the regal pose and the delicately rendered,
ironically ordinary face. Flint specialized in such offhand bravura, and
all of his works never fail to temper the sensuous with just the right
amount of distance. Lots of them can be found at this site. CK